Behind the Scenes: How IntentBoard Components Communicate

Christian Gellert and me are currently in the development stages of crafting an innovative Minimum Viable Product (MVP) called IntentBoard. Designed to take the guesswork out of your lead selection process.

The development of IntentBoard continues to be an interesting and exciting journey, and communication between the components is an important building block. Let's take a look at how I ensured smooth communication between the IntentBoard components.

IntentBoard's Communication Backbone: Azure Event Grid

I've got IntentBoard.Scraper component (Worker) working away, scraping data from websites, and on the other side, IntentBoard.Core component, which is the brain of the operation, managing our core domain and logic. These two components needed to "talk" to each other without being directly connected - a bit of a challenge, but necessary to keep things clean and decoupled.

The why is simple: I want each component to focus on doing one thing well and not get tangled up in a tight knot of dependencies. The worker doesn't need to know how the core processes or stores data, and vice versa. So each part has its autonomy, which in turn makes things a lot simpler and minimizes the potential ripple effect when changes need to be made down the line.

The Intermediary: Managed Message Broker

So Azure Event Grid became the intermediary, bridging the gap and facilitating seamless, yet decoupled, communication between the worker and the core.

My choice of Azure Event Grid wasn't accidental. It's lightweight, straightforward, and designed to work seamlessly with event-driven architectures. It just allows the worker to say, "Hey, I've got this data," without having to know who's listening on the other end, which in this case is the core. The Core picks it up, processes the data, and voila, everything flows without them having to interact directly.

Ease of Use & Cost-Effective Operations

With Azure Event Grid, I found a sweet spot where I can create topics (think of them as communication channels or categories) where the Worker (Scraper) publishes events. The Core subscribes to these topics and processes incoming events, ensuring a smooth and responsive flow of data. And it does all this without breaking the bank. Azure Event Grid only charges us for what we use - actual operations - not the total number of subscribers or topics, keeping things cost-effective during IntentBoard's development phase.

The Way Forward: Scalability & Maintenance

As IntentBoard grows, so will its needs. Using Azure Event Grid, I've also established a path for scalable and low-maintenance solutions. Because it scales effortlessly with the number of events, not the number of subscribers, it helps me ensure that as IntentBoard grows, the communication mechanism doesn't become a bottleneck or a financial burden.

It's about creating a system that talks where it needs to, without unnecessary entanglement, ensuring that each component of IntentBoard doesn't just work in isolation, but contributes to a seamless, cohesive, and efficient whole.

What do you think? Please share your ideas and experiences in the comments.

Cheers!